


we drink to forget the coming storm.

by reviloo



Category: Twosetviolin
Genre: (does conservative asian parenting count as a tag;;), 5+1, Brief NSFW, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25375471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reviloo/pseuds/reviloo
Summary: tonight’s slumber is so imminent and yet, you’re not ready to fall. not yet.
Relationships: Eddy Chen/Brett Yang
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	we drink to forget the coming storm.

**Author's Note:**

> first off, a huge thank you to kay (aka sibeddyus) for betaing this! show them some love and support by checking out their works :D (there's a lot more fluff, i promise, it's very worth it): [ao3](/users/sibeddyus/) // [twitter](https://twitter.com/sibeddyus)
> 
> now, hello! thank you for checking this out! :D 
> 
> before we start, **please take another good, careful look at any of the warnings i've put in the tags above**. some more detailed warnings are included in the bullets below.
> 
> \- the characters in this fic delve into a few of their **insecurities regarding appearance** : because of this, food/starvation is briefly mentioned in one of these sections.  
> \- **alcohol and vomiting** are mentioned in one of these sections, too. if you're sensitive around that, then please be aware as you go through this fic!  
> \- i tagged brief nsfw; nothing explicit, the nsfw lasts for about a paragraph.  
> \- and!! a fic containing implications of suicide will also have **mentions of death**. mcd tag is above, you've been warned once again here.

**i. march 19th**

the skies are bleeding tonight, vibrant shades of orange and pinks dulling into an eerie black. it’s one of those nights, where the darkness creeps behind your head - it holds you tight, wraps a beguiled glove around your slender throat, and waits. you feel the unease, the discomfort settling in your chest, struggling for breath as your quivering fingers stumble across rusted clasps, cold from weeks of disuse.

protect yourself, brett. 

catch your breath, don’t cave to the pressure. don’t let it wrap around your chest or stop you from breathing. sink deeper into the carpet as the night pulls you into its embrace, as the sound of static and ocean waves crash in your head. your hands continue to fumble. you don’t know what you’re doing, nor what you’re seeing; darkness edges in the corner of your vision; tonight’s slumber is so imminent and yet, you’re not ready to fall. not yet.

you take his instrument out. the varnish is untainted by the years: it’s a brilliant red, an ethereal crimson fitting of a king. it holds its own luster when it gleams in the lightless room. you’re reminded of his eyes - specifically, how they glitter even in the dark; there’s always a faint determination in there. a warmth whenever his gaze settles on you. mirth sparkles in those irises every time he throws an arm around you and pulls you into his chest; every chuckle is a resonant breath of fresh air, an unforgettable comfort-

it’s funny how you still think like that once your thoughts slide over to him. 

you always forget he isn’t there anymore.

* * *

**ii. march 20th**

you’ve never had great eyesight. thick and heavy charcoal frames, lenses that screamed that you were near-blind to the world around you, glasses that only made your eyes droop further down into your cheeks. 

hell, in general, you’ve never seen yourself as beautiful, handsome, cute, _whatever_ it was: you’ve always justified it with the glasses. they sag your face and drag your skin all the way down, until pieces of your flesh are dripping off your face and all you have left are the bones of your skull. 

it’s taken you some time to realize that it’s definitely not the glasses that make you unattractive. it’s just you. cheeks too pale, lips an unnatural red against translucent skin, jawline nonexistent as it flows into your neck, nose too wide and flat. if anything, the glasses make you look better by blocking out the lifelessness in your dull eyes.

it’s taken you some more time to learn that you’re already attractive. he snickers every time you bring up the possibility of minor _plastic surgery_ , maybe to get that hollywood glamor everyone is pining for; you’ve never been able to quite understand how any of your fans could respect a face that looks like yours. everything is always brushed off by laughter: you think your teeth aren’t straight enough, he points at his mouth. you think you need to lose weight, he pokes at his own stomach and yawns before ordering bubble tea for the two of you. you think your lips are too red, he hums and tosses you _the_ wig because the next scene has lipstick involved, and he hates having to deal with lipstick on his teeth.

 _you can be edwina this time._ a snort. _how high can your voice go, sir bretty?_

you’re in front of the camera today. not that there’s any point; you haven’t pressed the record button for all too long. it’s always here, when you reach to your left and feel the empty cushion instead of the fuzz of his sweatpants, that you wonder what pushed him to do it. was it the fact that by verbalizing your own insecurities, you made him recognize his? maybe the fact that by verbalizing your own insecurities, he felt that he couldn’t say anything about his own? or that if he did, you would have lost the steady pillar of humor that kept you confident?

you slide your glasses off and set them on the table. all you see on the video feedback is a blur of pink and black.

his golden frames are resting right in front of you, and you figure that it wouldn’t hurt to put them on. so on your face they go, and you turn to look at the camera, wondering what his frames could have been hiding, what secrets lay behind those reflective lenses.

a snicker. yeah, you look so much better this way.

* * *

**iii. march 21st**

you’re warm.

you’ve always been called backwards by your parents: the need for math tutoring after getting a fail on your report card was the first step of your descent from heaven, followed by your choice to pursue a music degree. follow that with the fact that your brother - one of the best doctors in australia, maybe even the world - can spoil your parents with so much money that they both retired as soon as they could, while you struggled to secure enough finances for yourself.

now follow _that_ with the fact that you weren’t only into girls, and suddenly you had fallen from earth down into the circles of hell. you were foreign. you didn’t belong. your parents wished and still wish they can go back in time to _correct_ you; they wonder what they did wrong in the past, if it was something they said that pushed you in the wrong direction, in the direction of a failure.

thank god you have him, right? the most determined man from the skies, who does everything to maintain some semblance of stability, even when he found himself waking up to a hospital room and a wheelchair. you don’t remember when you’ve started keeping him a secret from your parents: never tell them that he is a professional musician, let them believe that he is following the footsteps of your brother; hide your channel from your parents and never bring him over to visit them; create a new life, one that consists of solely lies, and let your parents blissfully believe that he has always been forward. a good influence that you simply failed to learn from.

you never said anything. you never will. you still think of it, sometimes, the mortification flushes across your face when you wake up after another one of those dreams: your hands tangled in his hair. the still silence interrupted by your voice mewling his name, a blessing rolling off your tongue. his lips trailing your neck, leaving behind marks of red that would disappear as soon as you opened your eyes to cold sheets.

you still wonder what made you stay silent. why you never decided to let him know what your heart felt. maybe it’s the fact that you’ve always thought of him as a heavenly figure, never destined to sully his hands with a demon like you. your need to keep him an angel pushed out the realization that he was just like you: backwards, a disappointment to his parents, another soul that had fallen too far with nowhere else to go but you.

your hands reach behind you and pull the drawstrings. his hood covers your face further and smothers you in the memories of peppermint shampoo; there’s a chill in the back of your head from where the opening of the hoodie is. you shut your eyes and dream. you pray that you’ll wake up to your dreams being reality, and sleep to reality being your next nightmare.

* * *

**iv. march 22nd**

you don’t know why you started thinking that way last night. you’re brett yang: confidence rings with every step you take. you’ve never regretted anything, nor have you hesitated doing anything; so why is he so difficult for you? why do you reconsider your decisions every time it involves him?

he writes prose: elegant letters that span pages in that journal of his. it’s kept in his backpack all the time. he never dares to take it out in front of you for some reason; and perhaps you would have respected his privacy, if not for your own curiosity and the sudden cold shoulder from his family as his sister throws the leather book at your chest with puffy eyes - because to them, you hold responsibility for them losing their blood to a razor, stained in permanent crimson. 

(for short, it’s your fault he died. nobody ever says that to your face, but you know the thought simmers in their head every time they lay their eyes on you.

do you believe it?)

you’ve read all of them once. you’ve bookmarked every single one of them that you want to read again. his journal has been dog-eared to the point that the book can no longer shut properly.

there are four pages untouched out of the entire notebook. those letters you have down by memory. occasional phrases pop back into your head as you reach into the drawer for the journal and thumb through the fickle, unfolded pages; you watch them flicker in the warm lights.

april 17th. one of those more precarious nights where the both of you head out for a casual drink, and he ends up downing too much; you take him back to his room and leave him on the bed, unaware that he’s still awake. you’re unaware that the drink brings up some of his more hidden thoughts, the ones that he thought were secure in the recesses of his mind: he’s scared of the dark. always has been. it wraps a beguiled glove around his slender throat and waits for him to fall, to realize that the shadows have always been more like home to him than anything else; he’s scared because it feels as if permanent slumber is so imminent and yet, he’s not ready to fall. not yet, because you step back into the bedroom at the sound of horrid coughing and vomiting, and you’re right there to clean him up as he sobs for being a mess. 

you tell him he’s doing just fine. he clings onto you and continues to apologize, words unintelligible as they spill out of his mouth. you’ve always forgotten how touchy he is until his entire weight brings both of you down onto the bathroom tiles; and just like that, he’s knocked out, and you can’t stand back up without waking the child.

he writes. he thinks he’s fucked up. he wonders why you avert his gaze and why you look so hesitant around him; he can’t remember a thing about last night and prays that he did nothing wrong. he sinks deeper into the carpet as the night pulls him into its embrace. the sound of static and ocean waves crash in his head; he’s not on anything now, but the dark is still there and ready. he wonders if he tried to kiss you last night. maybe more. he wonders if that’s why you panicked.

he tries to remember the sensation, maybe savor it for a second, only for his mind to draw a blank.

(you’ve never told him that the reason why you can’t look him in the eyes is because both of you were so close. it’s the first time you’ve been able to hold him like that, the first time that you’re able to sleep with him on your chest, with such a blissful smile on his face. you can still recall freezing when he shifted the second you pressed your lips to his forehead. you were afraid of being discovered, so you laid back down and pretended to sleep.)

may 26th. he gets his glasses.

he thinks that you’re staring because there’s something wrong with him. maybe it’s the glasses. they sag his face and drag his skin all the way down, until pieces of his flesh are dripping off his face and all he has left are the bones of his skull. he wonders why you think there’s something wrong with your face, because he’s never seen anything as beautiful as you. you’re a greek god, a work of art that only demands to be studied, and you deserve so much more than a handful of insecurities. you’re already perfect.

he remembers never smiling quite as wide after someone made an offhand comment about his teeth; he remembers knowing the feeling of hunger, as well as he claims to know you, after someone made an offhand comment about his weight; he remembers how he stopped playing princesses and fairies with his sister after someone made an offhand comment about his _unusual_ games. he’s never said anything about this to you. never will. these are his own fears, his own insecurities, and he knows he doesn’t have the strength to conquer them on his own; but he’s going to keep trying.

the issue is that it feels more difficult to do so when he isn’t sure why you’re staring at him like that. it’s the damn glasses. they make him look worse than he already does. but he won’t say anything. by verbalizing his own insecurities, you would have felt that you couldn’t say anything about your own. your illusion of him as the steady pillar of humor would have shattered, and that is the last thing that he wants, for you to view him as something to be pitied.

(you can’t help staring at him, because suddenly you can’t see his eyes; you see the hints of green and pink in the glass every time he turns to face you, but where are the shades of chocolate brown, the irises that hold the universe in them? you’ve never told him that the illusion broke too many years ago, when he landed himself in the hospital during their university years; you should have. you really should have.)

june 14th. happy pride month, he writes. it’s his only journal entry for that month. he’s out to his parents and his family, and suddenly he has fallen from earth down into the circles of hell. he is foreign. he doesn’t belong. his parents wished and still wish they can go back in time to _correct_ him; they wonder what they did wrong in the past, if it was something they said that pushed him in the wrong direction, in the direction of a failure.

the conversation doesn’t go well; he’s anticipated that. it doesn’t bother him that he is asked to never come back, it’s how they phrase it - that they have always known this day would come. they make it sound as if it’s a well-known fact that there is something wrong with him. his father wonders if it’s because of the tea parties he’s held with his sister, wonders if he should have stopped them once he moved to try on some of the dresses; his mother wonders if it’s because of the violin, if it’s because all of the _feminine_ songs that he’s played and fallen in love with. they ask him if he’s not feeling well, if he’s running a fever, if he’s been doing any types of drugs lately or something that he doesn’t want them to know.

his father used to call him lucifer, his little demon child; it’s today that he means it. 

the day isn’t a filming day for the two of you. he’s unaware that you’ve just woken up from another one of those dreams; he heads home and falls onto the bed and wonders if it’s worth it to risk everything and call you over. but he’s never been confident. he’s never taken security in his own actions. why should things be different now? he’s already lost his parents, and his parents are rapidly spreading the news to other family members - he notices that the amount of friends on facebook dwindles, the number of followers on his personal accounts suddenly drops. he’s backwards, a disappointment to his parents, another soul that has fallen too far with nowhere else to go.

he’s not ready to lose you.

(the unsettling gut feeling when he sends a text later that night saying that he was just busy with some family business doesn’t tear you apart. you don’t notice something is wrong when his sister texts you asking to check up on him, because he has her number blocked. where are the ringing warning bells when he shrugs and turns away the second you ask about his sister? why is your head silent when his eyes are glazed over?)

august 7th. he wishes for things to go right for once in his life. his own head fucks with him, plays games that sends him reeling; because now, _now_ the world truly fucked up. sometime in his past life, he must have committed a drastic sin, one so bad that karma herself marked a target on his back.

you have a girlfriend. you do, and she’s beautiful, and she’s the kindest being that he’s ever met. he looks at you two every time your eyes meet and he sees nothing but pure adoration in your gaze (you don’t remember. you’ve never liked her much in the first place, enough that you’ve nearly forgotten about this until you read it). you and him are driving home that night after you drop her off. you can’t shut up about her. all he can hear is white noise.

he catches bits and pieces though. she’s so pretty, she’s flawless; clearly, he’s not, with his acne scars and crooked teeth. she’s so smart, she’s a doctor at brisbane’s largest hospital and has enough finances that she could retire even now; bile crawls up his throat, and he nearly laughs: _oh, how close he was to pursuing that path_. she’s always so bubbly and cheerful, there’s never a moment when you feel like she’s weighing you down; it’s then that he starts crying in the back of your car, and he’s grateful that it’s dark enough for you to not notice. has he not tried hard enough to maintain that facade? 

eddy chen is not the happiest man in the world. but he’s worked so hard to pretend to be. he’s pretended to be satisfied with the kickstarter and twoset; he’s bragged about hours of practice to you despite never finding the motivation to pick his violin up; he’s locked up his heart and sealed the adoration from his eyes around you, brett yang, you absolute _bastard_. he thinks- he knows you don’t reciprocate his feelings. 

you’re brett yang: confidence rings with every step you take. you’ve never regretted anything, nor have you hesitated doing anything. if you’re in love with someone, you say it to their face. you press your lips to theirs without a thought. the real question for him is, where did he fuck up? what could he have done better?

where can he even go from here, as he looks up at the red skies of hell? he’s always envisioned you there, a winged angel flying down, clasping his hand and bringing him back to comfort and security. maybe that’s too much to even hope for; the fact that you’re there, right by his side nearly every day, should have been enough for him. he’s craving too much and getting too selfish; there’s too many things wrong with him, too many problems that would be a burden to you-

(for short, it’s your fault he died. you believe it now.

a case of unrequited love on top of everything else; even if someone claimed that it wasn’t your fault, they wouldn’t have been able to deny that you were the one who dealt the finishing blow.)

* * *

**v. march 23rd**

he likes ice cream cake, so you buy the largest size they have. the frosting is white and blue - his favorite color, because it reminds him of _la mer_ and _clair de lune_ and _sibelius violin concerto_ , all pieces he listens to when the day is particularly grey.

they ask what you want written on the cake, and you tell them _i’m sorry_ would do just fine. you’ve given a strange stare, before it’s written on the cake in bright red jelly; _i’m sorry_ in the most elegant script possible, the curves so delicately placed on the frosting to avoid smearing the perfect rows of white. they glance over the counter, asking if you want a name, and you shake your head, watching as they break into a sheepish, uncomfortable grin.

you skip the graveyard. no point in having a birthday party with so many other souls there; he hates large gatherings. instead, you go straight for the bench by a brick building. the sun is going down, and with that, so are the number of people that are around to watch you open the box, cut a slice with a plastic knife, and toss it to the nearby tree.

there’s an odd satisfaction that settles in your stomach with that. you close the box, stand up from the bench, and walk away before the cake has a chance to fully melt into the sodden dirt.

* * *

**\+ i. march 24th**

you don’t recognize it, but he’s there the next morning, too. he sits on the bench in front of the math tutoring place, the same bench where you had left the cake; his mouth lingers with the taste of sweetness that he’ll treasure for the rest of eternity. he doesn’t know why you’re apologizing. he’ll accept it - he’ll accept anything that you say and believe - but he doesn’t know why you thought it was necessary.

you don’t realize it, but he can hear you. he shuts his eyes as a shaky scale begins to play, with notes out of tune and the bow sliding across the strings thanks to months without laying a finger on your instrument. _good,_ he thinks. your scales, which would have been looked down upon by your old conservatory teachers, are music to his ears. he looks up now and sees blue skies and the heavens and your music; hell is far behind him, and it’ll never catch up; lucifer is just another name.

you don’t know it, but he dreams for you to move on. forget him. throw out all of his old stuff, get a new bathtub, donate his violin somewhere - do something and get rid of every last trace of eddy in this world. he’ll always be waiting for you, right on this exact bench in front of this exact building; but until then, he wants to see you happy. he wants to see you pull off that soloist career and travel the world, so you can enter death with an endless barrage of stories to tell; and once that happens, he’ll never tell you to shut up.

so move on, dear. light a candle in the dark, and let the skies heal over.

**Author's Note:**

> title from [We drink to forget the coming storm](https://leylandkirby.bandcamp.com/album/we-drink-to-forget-the-coming-storm), from leyland kirby. i've referenced their works before!;; in case you can't tell i love their music aoiwjefaowi please check out that album, it's three hours of really good solid music!
> 
> anyways, thank you again for reading <3 hope you take care and enjoy your day^^


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